Descriptors and Predictors of Burden and Information Needs

Chulabhorn Cancer Center112 enrolled

Overview

the purpose of this study is to investigate over time patients' symptom burden, caregiving burden, and patients and caregivers' need for information on patient symptom self-management at home during palliative radiotherapy(RT) for lung cancer. Repeatedly assessing burden and information needs on symptom self-management at home can help healthcare professionals to design a bespoke service and plan of care for both patients and family caregivers. In addition, I will explore psycho-social and clinical predictors of burden and information needs in patients and caregivers. These predictors can help health professionals to identify patients and caregivers at risk for distress during palliative radiotherapy for lung cancer.

Eligible patients will be invited to take part in the study via a patient information sheet. They will also be asked to nominate their primary caregiver, who will also be invited to take part in the study. We will give patients and caregivers 24 hours to decide whether they want to take part or not. If they do decide to take part, all research participants will be involved in the study on four consecutive occasions before, during and after their treatment. These four time points will be the following: * before first fraction of RT * 1st week of RT (1st-5th faction) * 2nd week of RT (6th-10th fraction) * 1 month after the last fraction of RT The principal researcher, i.e. Saengrawee Thanthong, will endeavour to collect questionnaires in the hospital. If participants cannot come to the hospital to receive radiotherapy or for their follow up appointment and complete the questionnaire, then the principal researcher will call them and offer to complete the questionnaires over the phone so as to minimise missing data due to attrition.

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Enrollment

112

Conditions

Advanced Lung Cancer Symptoms

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria:• Inclusion criteria for patients: * Histological diagnosis of Lung cancer with stage III-IV(TNM) * Age: 18 years or over * Planning for palliative RT * Scheduled to receive up to 10 fractions of palliative radiotherapy (Stevens, Macbeth, Toy, Coles, \& Lester, 2015) • Exclusion criteria for patients: * Non-English, Non-Thai speaking * Diagnosis of severe cognitive or mental illness that affects communication Patients' family caregivers will also be invited to participate as per below: * Inclusion criteria for caregivers: * Family member of the care recipient can be spouse, child, parent, friend etc. * Age: 18 years or over * Only one family member if the patient presents with more than one. * Same person in every time point * Exclusion criteria for caregivers: * Non-English, Non-Thai speaking

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Changes of symptom experiences

Measure by the Thai version of modified version of the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS)

Time frame: These four time points will be the following: before first fraction of RT, 1st week of RT (1st-5th faction), 2nd week of RT (6th-10th fraction) and 1 month after the last fraction of RT.

Changes of information need

information need on symptom self-management at home measure by The Supportive Care Needs Survey - Patient version (SCNS) (Bonevski et al., 2000\& McElduf et al., 2004) and Partners and Caregivers version (SCNS-P\&C) - Information needs subscale.